Old World vultures are likely polyphyletic, representing two subfamilies, the Aegypiinae and Gypaetinae, and some genera of the latter may be of independent origin. Evidence concerning the origin, as well as the timing of the divergence of each subfamily and even genera of the Gypaetinae has been elusive.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Compared with the Old World, the New World has an unexpectedly diverse and rich fossil component of Old World vultures. Here we describe a new accipitriform bird, Anchigyps voorhiesi gen. et sp. nov., from the Ash Hollow Formation (Upper Clarendonian, Late Miocene) of Nebraska. It represents a form close in morphology to the Old World vultures. Characteristics of its wing bones suggest it was less specialized for soaring than modern vultures. It was likely an opportunistic predator or scavenger having a grasping foot and a mandible morphologically similar to modern carrion-feeding birds.

Conclusions/Significance

The new fossil reported here is intermediate in morphology between the bulk of accipitrids and the Old World gypaetine vultures, representing a basal lineage of Accipitridae trending towards the vulturine habit, and of its Late Miocene age suggests the divergence of true gypaetine vultures, may have occurred during or slightly before the Miocene.

Like this:

BBC ‘Blue Planet – Deep Trouble’ team explain the environmental dangers facing the world’s shallow waters. With high demands for rare species of fish, coral reefs are in danger of being fished out and deserted.

When coral are threatened by encroaching toxic algae, they do not have the luxury of running from their enemy. That is not to say these stationary creatures are defenseless, though. Acropora coral has evolved to emit a chemical call for help, and within minutes, a goby fish will show up on the scene, ready to nibble off the algae. Researchers recently discovered this underwater partnership in the waters near Fiji. They say this symbiotic relationship is the first known example of a species chemically signaling another in order to remove a competitor species.

The fish’s response time is short because the goby fish are never far away from the coral. Nestled in the crevices of the reef, protected from predators, goby fish feast on a smörgåsbord of local fares: coral mucus, algae and zooplankton. In return, the goby is available for minor coral maintenance issues like mowing the toxic algae lawn. This task is pretty simple for the fish—one species of goby observed in this study ate the stuff and another just trimmed it off—and important for the coral.

(Washington, D.C., November 9, 2012) Many of the 48 million Americans who enjoy bird watching will have a strong interest in the pending verdicts in two unprecedented lawsuits in Toronto, Canada. One of the deadliest threats to birds worldwide – building collisions – has, in a sense, been put on trial.

A verdict in the first trial, which began in April, 2011, is expected from Justice of the Peace William Turtle on November 14. It pits the owners of three adjoining glass office buildings – Consilium Place Towers – against two environmental groups – Ecojustice and Ontario Nature.

Those groups claim that the buildings, whose exterior faces are almost entirely glass, are responsible the deaths of about 7,000 birds in the last decade, making them likely the most deadly in the entire Greater Toronto area.

Menkes Consilium Inc., Menkes Developments Ltd., and Menkes Property Management Services Ltd., along with three other companies, have been charged under Canada’s Environmental Protection Act with discharging a contaminant – light reflected from the glass – that causes harm to animals. In addition to possible fines under that law, the companies also face a maximum fine of $60,000 under the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act for causing birds to be in distress. The lawsuit followed lengthy, failed attempts to negotiate a settlement between the parties.

The verdict in the second trial, which began in April 2012, is expected from Judge Melvyn Green on December 4, 2012. Cadillac Fairview Corporation, the owner of three office buildings in the city, has been charged with violating Canada’s Species at Risk Act. The charges are being brought in a private prosecution by Ecojustice.

The Toronto-based non-profit Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP), which works to document and prevent bird collisions with buildings and rescue birds that survive, estimates that the complex is among the most lethal in the city. The charges allege that at least 800 birds were killed at the complex in 2010 including ten birds listed as Threatened under the Canadian Species at Risk Registry. Those ten birds were from two species, the Canada Warbler and Olive-sided Flycatcher.

FLAP estimates that between 1 and 9 million birds are killed in such collisions annually in Toronto – the majority during spring and fall migrations. Toronto is located in a major migratory bird corridor, and as of January, 2010, designs for new construction and significant renovation in Toronto must be bird-friendly.

Six months ago, Consilium Place was sold to a real estate investment company who has been installing window treatments on untreated elevations of 100 and 200 Consilium with a film designed to reduce bird collisions. Yonge Corporate Centre has also installed the same film to the north elevation of their 4120 Yonge Street building — the most deadly to birds — as a test for effectiveness. In both cases, volunteers have observed a significant reduction in the overall collision rate for both structures.

Concern over bird collision deaths and the need for mitigation measures is gaining in importance in the United States as well.

“Builders and architects in the U.S. are showing increasing interest in bird friendly construction. Cost-effective technology now exists to greatly reduce these unnecessary bird deaths. San Francisco has passed a law mandating bird-friendly construction for certain buildings; so has Minnesota, and other local governments are considering them as well,” said Dr. Christine Sheppard, Bird Collisions Program Manager at American Bird Conservancy (ABC), a leading bird conservation organization in the United States and the only U.S. organization with a national bird collisions program.

A study from 2006 estimated that 100 million to a billion birds were killed by collisions annually, in the United States alone. However, the amount of glass in the built environment has been rapidly increasing, as new technologies make huge sheets of glass available for applications from home picture windows to skyscrapers, meaning that it now seems likely the one billion figure may now be an underestimate.

Birds are killed when they try to fly to apparent sky, trees or structures reflected in the glass’ mirror-like surface, to plants or food seen through glass or when they try to fly through what they perceive to be a tunnel through a building. Even small areas of glass, such as those in home windows, can cause bird fatalities. Light emanating from a building or its landscaping at night attracts birds, further exacerbating the problem.

“Many of us have, at one time or another, walked into a glass door, so we know how jarring that is to our bodies just at walking speed. Try to imagine hitting that same pane at 30 miles per hour, thirty or more feet off the ground. It’s not surprising that so many bird collisions prove fatal,” Sheppard said.

As part of a national-level program to reduce the massive and growing number of bird deaths resulting from building collisions in the United States, ABC has released American Bird Conservancy’s Bird-Friendly Building Designs. The 58-page guide, downloadable at collisions.abcbirds.org,is especially helpful to architects, planners, building owners, and regulators, and contains over 100 photographs and illustrations. It focuses on both the causes of collisions and the solutions, with a comprehensive appendix on the biological science behind the issue.

In cooperation with Carnegie Museum’s Powdermill Avian Research Center in Pa., ABC operates a research program which tests glass or glass treatments to determine what products demonstrate a lower incidence of bird collisions. ABC has also helped establish classes eligible for American Institute of Architects’ sustainable design continuing education credit, to instruct architects on how to design beautiful buildings that are also safe for birds.

Dec. 19, 2012 — Although climate change may alter the distributions of many species, changes in land use may compound these effects. Now, a new study by PRBO Conservation Science (PRBO) researcher Dennis Jongsomjit and colleagues suggests that the effects of future housing development may be as great or greater than those of climate change for many bird species. In fact, some species projected to expand their distributions with climate change may actually lose ground when future development is brought into the picture: here.

February 2014: A recent American study has found that up to 988 million birds are killed in the US each year as a result of collisions with buildings. It provides quantitative evidence to support the conclusion that building collisions are second only to cats as the greatest source of direct human-caused mortality for US birds. (estimated to kill as many as 3 billion birds each year): here.

There an inhuman and uncultured race
Howled hideous praises to their Demon-God;
They rushed to war, tore from the mother’s womb
The unborn child – old age and infancy
Promiscuous perished; their victorious arms
Left not a soul to breathe. Oh! they were fiends!
But what was he who taught them that the God
Of Nature and benevolence had given
A special sanction to the trade of blood?
His name and theirs are fading, and the tales
Of this barbarian nation, which imposture
Recites till terror credits, are pursuing
Itself into forgetfulness.

…

Whence, thinkest thou, kings and parasites arose?
Whence that unnatural line of drones who heap
Toil and unvanquishable penury
On those who build their palaces and bring
Their daily bread? – From vice, black loathsome vice;
From rapine, madness, treachery, and wrong;
From all that genders misery, and makes
Of earth this thorny wilderness; from lust,
Revenge, and murder. – And when reason’s voice,
Loud as the voice of Nature, shall have waked
The nations; and mankind perceive that vice
Is discord, war and misery; that virtue
Is peace and happiness and harmony;
When man’s maturer nature shall disdain
The playthings of its childhood; – kingly glare
Will lose its power to dazzle, its authority
Will silently pass by; the gorgeous throne
Shall stand unnoticed in the regal hall,
Fast falling to decay; whilst falsehood’s trade
Shall be as hateful and unprofitable
As that of truth is now.

Where is the fame
Which the vain-glorious mighty of the earth
Seek to eternize? Oh! the faintest sound
From time’s light footfall, the minutest wave
That swells the flood of ages, whelms in nothing
The unsubstantial bubble. Ay! to-day
Stern is the tyrant’s mandate, red the gaze
That flashes desolation, strong the arm
That scatters multitudes. To-morrow comes!
That mandate is a thunder-peal that died
In ages past; that gaze, a transient flash
On which the midnight closed; and on that arm
The worm has made his meal.

…

Look on yonder earth:
The golden harvests spring; the unfailing sun
Sheds light and life; the fruits, the flowers, the trees,
Arise in due succession; all things speak
Peace, harmony and love. The universe,
In Nature’s silent eloquence, declares
That all fulfil the works of love and joy, –
All but the outcast, Man. He fabricates
The sword which stabs his peace; he cherisheth
The snakes that gnaw his heart; he raiseth up
The tyrant whose delight is in his woe,
Whose sport is in his agony.

…

Now swells the intermingling din; the jar
Frequent and frightful of the bursting bomb;
The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the shout,
The ceaseless clangor, and the rush of men
Inebriate with rage: – loud and more loud
The discord grows; till pale Death shuts the scene
And o’er the conqueror and the conquered draws
His cold and bloody shroud. – Of all the men
Whom day’s departing beam saw blooming there
In proud and vigorous health; of all the hearts
That beat with anxious life at sunset there;
How few survive, how few are beating now!
All is deep silence, like the fearful calm
That slumbers in the storm’s portentous pause;
Save when the frantic wail of widowed love
Comes shuddering on the blast, or the faint moan
With which some soul bursts from the frame of clay
Wrapt round its struggling powers.

The gray morn
Dawns on the mournful scene; the sulphurous smoke
Before the icy wind slow rolls away,
And the bright beams of frosty morning dance
Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood
Even to the forest’s depth, and scattered arms,
And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments
Death’s self could change not, mark the dreadful path
Of the outsallying victors; far behind
Black ashes note where their proud city stood.
Within yon forest is a gloomy glen –
Each tree which guards its darkness from the day,
Waves o’er a warrior’s tomb.

…

From kings and priests and statesmen war arose,
Whose safety is man’s deep unbettered woe,
Whose grandeur his debasement. Let the axe
Strike at the root, the poison-tree will fall;
And where its venomed exhalations spread
Ruin, and death, and woe, where millions lay
Quenching the serpent’s famine, and their bones
Bleaching unburied in the putrid blast,
A garden shall arise, in loveliness
Surpassing fabled Eden.

David Cameron should be made to read this at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Day, 11.11.2012, as Obama and leaders across all Western countries taking part in their murderous, illegal assassinations, slaughters and ram raids. Thank you.

As we wrote today, CIA boss General Petraeus resigns, not because of war crimes under his watch in Iraq or Afghanistan, or of CIA torture. Not because of rape. Because of a consensual sexual relationship.

On the same day, the same happens with the boss of Lockheed Martin merchants of death corporation. Not for being a merchant of death. Not because of rape. Because of a consensual sexual relationship.

THE HSBC bank, the biggest bank in Europe, says it is looking into allegations that it has set up a large number of offshore accounts in Jersey for criminal gangs to launder ‘dirty’ money’, the profits made from drugs and people trafficking.

HSBC bank has just put aside a further $800m (£500m) to cover potential money-laundering fines in the US.

The bank had already put aside $700m after a US Senate report published in July said lax controls had left it vulnerable to money laundering.

Just before that fine was imposed, HSBC’s chief compliance officer resigned over allegations that the bank ignored warnings that Mexican drug money was being allowed to pass through the bank.
The fine is the highest ever imposed by Mexican regulators.

It constitutes 51.5% of the 2011 annual profit of HSBC’s Mexican subsidiary.

Mexico’s National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV) said it had imposed the fine against HSBC due to its ‘non-compliance with anti-money laundering systems and controls’.

HSBC Mexico issued a statement acknowledging that it failed to report 39 suspicious transactions and had been late in reporting 1,729 others.

‘HSBC Mexico recognises it failed to strictly comply with banking regulations, and with the standards that regulators and clients expect of our institution,’ it said.

Earlier, a United States Senate committee found that HSBC had provided a conduit for ‘drug kingpins and rogue nations’.

After all this – now come the Jersey allegations.

According to the Daily Telegraph, the tax authorities have obtained details of ‘every British client of HSBC in Jersey’ based on information provided by a whistle-blower.

It has been reported that the 4,000 offshore account holders include a well-known drug dealer living in Central America, bankers who face allegations of fraud and a man once dubbed London’s ‘number two crook’.

The US Senate report alleged that staff at HSBC’s global operations had laundered billions of dollars for drug cartels and terrorists in a ‘pervasively polluted’ culture that persisted for years.

Capitalism is renowned as the operation of the ‘law of the jungle’, the survival of the fittest, as far as human society is concerned.

Now we have been shown, once again, that at its pinnacle there are groups of bankers who dominate the capitalist world economy, and are the envy of all those who want to get rich under capitalism, who are engaged in criminal activities, even by the standards of bourgeois law. In fact, where the criminal world ends and their world of super-exploitation begins is blurred, to say the least.

Rogue bank HSBC said today that it will pay $1.9 billion (£1.18bn) to buy its way out of a US government money-laundering probe: here. And here.